Analytics
25 questions about data analytics services (Athena, EMR, Kinesis, QuickSight, Redshift) for exam preparation.
A company needs to query logs stored in S3 in JSON format using SQL without loading them into a database. The solution must be serverless and pay only for executed queries. Which service should the architect use?
Category: Design High-Performing Architectures
Explanation
Detailed breakdown of the correct answer
Amazon Athena
Amazon Athena is a serverless interactive query service that allows analyzing data directly in S3 using standard SQL.
Athena requires no infrastructure, charges only for data scanned in each query, supports multiple formats (JSON, CSV, Parquet, ORC) and integrates seamlessly with AWS Glue Data Catalog.
Therefore, the correct answer is: Amazon Athena.
The option that says: Amazon Redshift is incorrect because it's a data warehouse that requires loading data, provisioning clusters and maintaining infrastructure, it's not serverless.
The option that says: Amazon EMR is incorrect because it requires provisioning Hadoop/Spark clusters, has fixed infrastructure costs and greater operational complexity.
The option that says: Amazon RDS with Aurora is incorrect because it's a relational database that requires loading data, not designed to query directly from S3.